Posted
by
timothy
on Tuesday December 26, 2006 @05:00PM
from the handwringer's-symphony dept.

simoniker writes "Gamasutra has just posted an interview with author Gerard Jones, subtitled 'Sex, Violence, Tension and Comic Books,' in which the writer of 'Killing Monsters' talks about violence and games eloquently. When asked: 'What do you think it is in your work that resonates with the gaming community?', Jones comments: 'Video games have been so much under attack recently, that I think there's a certain nervousness. Most people in this business are very pleasant and non-confrontational and the fact that they are being reviled as the causes of crime, causes of violence, is disturbing. On the one hand, I think people want to know how to respond to those criticisms. But on the other hand, I think there's some genuine anxiety that maybe games have a bad side, maybe there is a problem, and how do we deal with any guilt or fear?' He goes on to suggest of attacks on gaming: "I would say now we're kind of at the tail end. If games continue to push boundaries, particular ones could come under attack. A lot of it's just the medium being around long enough that people have realized the world hasn't gone to hell.""

The thing that always leaps to my mind, and they touched on it in tfa, is the persecution of comics in the late 40's early 50's. they were blamed for everything, from making kids more violent, to promoting homosexuality (all those guys in their tights with their little boy sidekicks), to promoting Communism...Not that everything wasn't accused of promoting Communism right then, but that's beside the point. They had congressional hearings, they came up with standards for "decency", the works.

Flash forward to the 80's when comics started going really adult in this country for the first time. Really dark, gory, and real. Congressional hearings? No. New standards? No.

And why not? Because they were just comic books. The same people who had read them as kids were running the country, and blew off the concerns of the few as unwarranted. Comics had been around forever, and nobody'd seen any ill effects, so what was the big deal? Not worth getting in a flap over.

The biggest thing against games right now is how new they are. You get these hugely violent movies, above and beyond the pale, and no one cares. Why? Because people grew up with movies. You understand whats going on there, there is no mystery...You can flash back to all the risque crap you watched in your youth, and know that it didn't warp you forever.

In ten, twenty, thirty years at the outside, video games will be completely accepted, and no one will give a damn when the new super realistic holographic blood & guts game comes out...Till then though, we're just going to have to suck it up, because the old fogies are still running things and they lack clue.

We've seen it with every ban in existance. It is either impossible or inhuman to exercise orrectly, and it never kills what it intends to ban. Instead the world evolves and the ban is ridiculed, along with those supporting it. Why? Because it is an artificial attempt to lead people into streets they want to break out of. And eventually they do.

This is of course no argument for/against the reasoning behind the ban. I'm all for more educational and more natural games that do not involve sex and gore, but I also want to give sex and gore it's rightfull place in our human existance. I think sex is educational, as it tells something about the boundaries of our perversities. I think gore is eductional, as it tells something about the boundaries of our fears. I think young people are looking for those boundaries and eventually, with our without help of their parents, will discover those in some way. Trying to hold these things back from them is keeping them from maturity in those fields. Declaring a ban is probably more distubing than anything else.

"Sex and gore" have been the predominant features of nature for hundreds of millions of years.

Your statement is correct as you use the past tense. For the last few centuries, and in ever increasing amounts, children are sheltered from both until they become adults. When they finally do encounter these matters years after they should have it comes as a shock to their world views. It is emotionally destabling to them when they discover just how much of the world revolves around "sex and gore". So what the grandparent seems to be trying to say is that the kids should receive, in moderation, the exposu

The biggest thing against games right now is how new they are. You get these hugely violent movies, above and beyond the pale, and no one cares.

What do you mean? There have been vocal opponents of violence in movies for decades. Same goes for TV, and I'm guessing they were successful because TV today is a lot less violent than it was in the 80's. Video games are not, and have never been, the sole targets for the anti-violence crowd.

When was the last time you saw a law passed in the states that made selling a violent movie to a minor against the law?

Parent's groups decry violence in movies, but it's not to the degree that they get outraged toward games...A movie that was exactly the same as GTA San Andreas would barely show up as a blip on their radar.

Let me make a disclaimer first. I don't think government has any business getting involved in this at all. Having said that, how can you compare someone watching a 90 minute movie a couple times to the hundreds of hours that a lot of these kids spend playing a video game...

No, states don't make violent movies illegal, though there are some places that have tried to ban people under 17 from R-rated movies.
The people who decry violence in video games have given up on films. That's why most of the high-grossing films in the last few years are PG. Admittedly, even PG films tend to have some violence; parental action groups in America tend to worry more about sex, and about violence in films that look "innocent."
As for movies just like GTA San Andreas: I think that, if they ex

As for movies just like GTA San Andreas: I think that, if they exist, they would probably be called "urban action thrillers." Parental groups deal with them by delegating them to theaters in (bad) neighborhoods where the parental groups have relatively little presence.

Just as Vice City was inspired by the crime dramas of the 80s, GTA:SA was inspired by the urban movies [ugo.com] of the 90's. Those movies were widely screened, and generally well received.

Of the seven films in that linked article, I had heard of and remembered four.
Also, most of those films were all but restricted to inner-city theaters when they came out. Trust me, I heard the controversies about Boyz in the Hood and Menace II Society. The only one that I don't think got ghettoized in its time was Casino, and that is because it was by Scorcese.

Out of the seven movies listed I had seen six of them by the time I was 16, half of them in the theater. These movies were the popular ones in my school since I was bused across town to be one of the token white guys in the ghetto so that no one could complain about the schools racial divide. However, I watched movies near my house, or rented them in a local video store, in what was considered a "good" (i.e. mostly white) neighborhood. The only one I didn't see in my non-ghetto neighborhood you ask? Casino.

"parental action groups in America tend to worry more about sex, and about violence in films that look "innocent."

They are obviously not doing very well, as I haven't seen a movie aimed at kids in the theaters that did not have what most would consider inappropriate material in a very long time. Heck, in Shrek 2, they had a guy giving himself a hummer in the castle courtyard. Now, I'm all for blowjobs in movies, and I am pretty liberal about what I would allow my kid to watch, but many of the "kids" m

Understood. I've seen and cringed at that sort of thing myself, many times. (Well, among the things I actually got.)
Actually, I think that the theory behind including multiple-entendres in children's films is that it'll whiz above the heads of the young and innocent; after all, many of those films move quickly enough that it's hard to dwell on any one such thing. The filmmakers bother because they seem to think the hidden-in-plain-sight ref. will add "pleasure" for older viewers who do get it. They don'

Not not enforced by law, but your point stands: most places voluntarily enforce the suggested age restrictions of the MPAA movie ratings. The same is not true for the ESRB's game ratings. Or maybe those ratings are just not as well known or as well accepted.

Cause kids play games and adults watch movies... unless they're animated... hmm strike that... kids mostly play video games now and only want to watch a movie if it is a feature length film about their favorite video game star....

A movie that was exactly the same as GTA San Andreas would barely show up as a blip on their radar.

There is a fundamental distinction between watching a movie for two hours and role-playing it's central character for days or weeks on end. You might want to read Gene Wolfe's cautionary tale "When I Was Ming the Merciless."

Same goes for TV, and I'm guessing they were successful because TV today is a lot less violent than it was in the 80's.

I just have to know, who is your cable or satellite provider on your planet? Because on my planet I see shows like the CSIs, Prison Break, 24, Supernatural, Buffy/Angel, Firefly, Battlestar Galactica. (Not, of course, counting stuff like Deadwood, Rome, Sleeper Cell, etc etc on the premium channels)

These shows generally don't have the same bullets/hour ratio that shows like the ATeam or Miami Vice did back in the 80s, but they all feature far more violence.

I'm as jaded as any Internet user, but there are a couple of TV shows that have had such vomit-inducing violence that I refuse to watch them anymore. But shit, that's just television, nobody watches that. Clearly we should be more worried about violent videogames, where you're almost always the good guy, and usually just shoot people.

The A-Team show had plenty of bullets flying, but how often were people actually hit? Generally, the violence was limited to people being knocked out or thrown from a vehicle by an explosion. I suspect the blood and gore were limited to help the show appeal to a larger family-oriented audience, though I suppose it is possible censorship was involved.

I'll trust you there. But that was 20 years ago! Have you seen a CSI? House? Grey's Anatomy? (Which is a nice soap until you get to the OR...) Or that trailer for Heroes that includes a shot of one lead sitting on an autopsy table--after her chest was cut open? That trailer wasn't as disgusting as it could've been, but it kinda shocked me...

I see that I answered the wrong question. Sorry...
The relative lack of blood and gore in shows like The A-Team was to make the show suitable for a large family-oriented audience. (This is not the same as "appeals to": if it were, TV would not be as bloody as it is.)
Back in the '70s through much of the '80s, there was a convention of "family hour"--from 8 pm eastern/7 pm central to 9 pm eastern/8 pm central. There was also a strong push to minimze violence on TV, or at least the explicitness of that vio

TV is less violent than back in the 80's? Are you serious? That's funny. 80's TV shows were campy. The main show I can remember that comes close to what we watch today is Miami Vice. It's pretty muck like today's cop shows like the different flavors of CSI. If anything today's TV is pretty boring with "Relaity TV's" take over of the major networks. Sorry but masturbation won't make you go blind, sitting too close to the TV won't make you go blind, and violent entertainment (games/movies) won't turn y

TV is less violent because the market wishes it so. Advertisers want less violence because the people they want to sell their wares to want it. It's got nothing to do with government censorship, which is what TFA was about, and everything to do about What The Market Wants, which is what Slashdot seems to advocate, unless the market wants something else.

Not to mention that it's becoming more violent, lately. Anyone notice the violence in Heroes?

Flash forward to the 80's when comics started going really adult in this country for the first time. Really dark, gory, and real.

As a proud fogie (can't help when you were born...), I must point out that you left out the comics of the late sixties, Zap, Yellow Dog, etc., featuring R. Crumb, S. Clay Wilson and many others. 'Twas psychedelia mixed with sex and "kozmic trooths" in the comic medium that deserves mention, too. These were "underground" items and were generally purchased at City Lights Bookstore, SF, or one of the zillions of head shops around back then.

In California, we have our governor, the Terminator, coming out against violent video games. Arnold does have his amusing moments.

But to really push the critic's buttons in the US, you have to have sex. No game publisher in the US would publish the stuff Illusion [google.com] in Japan sells. "Battle Raper", "Sexy Beach", and "Artificial Girl".

Typical bugfix report: "Breast slider 1.5 download: With Ver1.0 was not possible, "it rubs", the chest and the nipple "it picks", "you play with the both hands", and so on c

50 years ago when I was a kid, we had cap guns and air riffles. My brother, Mike, I and two American Indians, Danny and Harry, used to play cowboys and Indians. We had a one square block area with lots of building, trees and brush to hunt each other in. Anyone shot had to stay dead for a fifty count. Our parents bought us the quite realistic-looking toy guns (much better than what you find today). No one thought twice about this; it was just clean, wholesome fun. However, in most places today, if kids

Well, the Flash has travelled through time using the cosmic treadmill [wikipedia.org] more often than Batman, Guy, or Spider-man have travelled through time, so it's reasonable to use his name in reference to time travel.

Very little of this kind of stuff actually goes on in these graphic video games, and when it does, it is *never* anywhere near as violent as what goes on in my imagination when I am playing a game like Nethack. Video cannot even begin to represent this level of madness.

>I'm far more worried about getting eaten by those damned a's and q's...:]

Learning to get early Poison Resistance and Speed will make you laugh at yourself for ever being worried about them.

L's and R's still bother me, if I let them. Most players make the mistake of using Genocide. I consider that to bea net balance at best, and I suspect it may be a net liability. You read that right -- I consider that going genolessmay indeed not be so much a challenge as a benefit. I've written on the subject ma

You say that like I don't try to:] I suppose I do straddle the boarders of letting myself get too weighed down by crap, but I get poison ASAP... if I don't die trying. The bigger problem is running out of HP, though I guess that's why you said speed helps.As for genocide, well, I grant that it's about a half step above cheating, but after polypiling I have abcghmqrtvLMNPRTUVYZ; genocided with that unfinished wizard of mine. I have to think that geno is still a net gain for survivability if you take it f

"People have killed each other. People are killing eath other. People will continue to kill each other. Class dismissed."A good history lesson indeed. Not sure if video games cause violence as much as humans simply being violent... like many carnivorous mammals. But maybe video games make people less violent. Perhaps I don't need to beat people up because I get my kicks watching red pixels. It's hard to tell which way things go, but none the less society needs something specific to blame when problems arise

Right now, the Nintendo Wii is wooing the very people who have for so long opposed video games, on whatever grounds. Soccer moms around the country are picking up Wii-motes, playing the games, and having incredible amounts of fun. Along with dad, grandpa, and grandma.

I have a friend whose retirement-age parents, who have never touched a video game before, were introduced to the Wii - and four hours later, it was my friend who had to call it quits because they tired him out. Soon the video game market will reach far beyond the young-single-male demographic and into the general population, at which point people will figure out that video games are no more or less harmful than movies, or even books. People may just finally realize that perhaps if they won't take 6 year old Johnny to see Silence of the Lambs, they probably shouldn't let him play Resident Evil either.

It won't be very long before the anti-video game nuts fade into oblivion.

The Wii may prove there is more to gaming than the teenage male gamer market (and the similar recently-a-teenage-male market), and then we'll see more diversity in games- one result would be more non-violent choices that are still fun and popular. And more choices for gamers like me who can take or leave shooters!

When I was the lead tester for Backyard Baseball GameCube at Atari in 2003, I was accused by my roommate's mother of ruining the lives of kids who sit indoors to play a baseball video game instead of going outside to play the real thing. When I pointed out that my parents kicked my ass out the door even though I had an Atari 2600 and a baseball video game, and that it's the parents responsibility to raise their kids instead of the government or video games, she got mad. The next day she plucked all the petals off of my petunias in the front yard to make potpourri. Go figure.

From what I see, the media makes claims that games such as Bully and Grand Theft Auto are causing problems with society. Granted, the GTA is designed to promote immoral behaviour within the game, as most players expect it necessary to do some crimes to advance through the game (while at the same time, trying not to get five stars).

However, in most of the cases displayed by the media, the situation is usually:- Overblown, such as the infamous "beating the hooker" in GTA - where such behaviour adds stars and very rarely is of use.- An advertisement - 25 to Life was designed to parasitically exploit the media controversy.- Moot, because the games in question are already rated for adults - no developer should have to tone their game designed to be rated 'M' just so that it can be played by teenagers.- Inconsistant - people decry games at random for being violent, but none are as serious as Solder of Fortune which implements dismemberments, and various death animations (including hits to the neather region.) Likewise, 'R' rated films are given more leinant treatement.- and/or Incorrect - Arlene wasn't named after a character in Doom.

If it weren't for the last two points, I would say something about Red-Pixel Syndrome.

The result is whenever I see an US state trying to pass a violent-video-game law, I immediatly treat it as a joke (especially when they know full well it won't survive the First.) This is in contrast to laws that were passed in Canada, which I agreed with since they brought video games on-par with other media.

that allows kids 18 years old to be sent to areas they never heard of (Iraq) to fight and die and get mangled/permanently disabled for a cause that has little to do with self-defense (or anything rational, really).But god forbid that they have any alcohol before they are 21. Or see a violent movie or play a violent game before they are 18 (and get a taste of the hell that is war/violence. Even if they think it is fun at the time).

I sometimes think our culture and priorities are schizophrenic. Sometimes I

I always wondered about the infamous beating the hooker thing. I mean maybe it actually is a benefit to our society. I figure if you suddenly have all of these video game players deciding they should beat hookers (lets go ahead and assume, that all of those geek and average teens will be magically transformed into the thug teens that troll the streets looking for gangs to fight and hookers to beat) maybe just maybe it would discourage young american girls from being hookers. I mean really...as a hooker i

Note: not all of us aggregate hookers into the same class of people as "low lifes, thugs,..., criminals, and other such things". For that matter, we may not even put drug dealers and murderers in the same category. I just don't want to hear whining about how slashdotters are only concerned with their own little fights over games and movies, yet unconcerned with the larger political fight over freedoms for all people and whatever supposedly benign vice they may have.

1. Humor. Please look it up.
2. Given that in most places prostitution is illegal hookers and criminals are one in the same. So don't go bitching at me about aggregating anything
3. Your "supposedly benign" vice comment cracks me up as piss poor justification for getting your jollies of however you like at the expense of others while throwing up the blinders on anything that would potentially make your little vice look bad. So by all means...please ignore what the drug trade does...or even better...go

1. When the crowd doesn't laugh, do you blame the crowd or the comedian?2. True; your aggregation with "low lifes", however, indicated not a legal definition of "criminal", but a moral one -- which I find myself disagreeing with.3. Are farmers not exploited too, on some level? Should we ban the sale of vegetables because someone, somewhere, was the victim of violence? Or only if most farmers are? Or all? I draw a rather trenchant line between drugs and prostitution themselves and the background of murder, t

1. You took something that was obviously nonsensical and chose to take offense to hookers being called criminals and how you should be able to enjoy whatever vice you want and how its hypocritical to talk about video game violence bans when you cant legally do the drugs you want and pick up hookers. There is no parallel and that is just a stupid point to make.
2. You keep insisting I am aggregating anything, again presumably to take as much offense to a nonsense comment as humanly possible and once agai

To be clear: it is possible to desire a freedom and not desire the use of it. I don't drink, I don't smoke, I use no drugs, and I have no use for hookers. It is improper to attribute my position simply to carnal desires, and is no real counter-argument in the first place. I may be in a better position than some in arguing for these freedoms, but your argument would strip the condemned man from his right to appeal on the basis of his personal involvement. It would be equally improper to reject my position on

Again I think you took my cynical view of this video game nonsense and my proposed solution too seriously. The "just a video game" thing is in an entirely different world from drugs and prostitution. If I want to protect my children from the influence of sex, violence, whatever in a video game, as a parent all I have to do is push the button on the TV labled power. Its an insult to have legislators involved in this at all since I already have absolute control just by being a parent who actually parents.

...so lets legalize smoking ads aimed at kids. Afterall, if behaviour and personality aren't affected by what people see and hear, then who cares about advertising laws.

To the people who think video violence doesn't matter: how do you know this? I am not a psych expert, so I cannot say anything with authority, but intuitively it seems a steady diet of narcissitic, solitary, violence oriented activity might affect child personality development.

Oh yeah, like there aren't any under-age smokers already.Is a 15 year old smoker less morally correct in your mind than a 20 year old smoker?

Stop trying to protect people from themselves. Taboo == attractive to the younger crowd. I'm convinced that if smoking were completely legal at any age (like alcohol is in some non-USA countries), and people didn't piss their pants about how evil it is, then there wouldn't be nearly as many smokers as there currently are.

If there is not the fear of being "killed" or "busted" then there is no rush. I agree violence can be more or less explicit, based upon the amount of graphic material, blood & guts, etc. but what we do we see on TV, in movies and in real life? How can we censor games when we don't censor the porno shop in the middle of town, suggestive late-night TV "phone sex line" ads or put all explicit magazines on lockdown? UFC, "50 best beat downs", "Top killing machines" etc. are shown on TV all the time. The

We do censor the late-night phone sex-line ads--or rather, the TV stations do. That's why you only see them late at night.
Some communities try to censor their porno shops. They set up rules mandating that XX% of all the content in there can't be any racier than in normal shops. They try to zone their city so that those shops can't be "in the middle of town." Of course, current law in Kansas is that you can't write zoning laws whose sole purpose is to prevent porn shops from setting up shop...
They don

Hello all, I decided to finally write this down in response to some people asking me why I enjoy immeasurably violent video games and movies. This explanation is written using the game "Manhunt" as it's primary example, mainly because of it's subject matter (which can best be described as a "snuff video game"). PLEASE read it in it's entirety before responding, it's easy to think i'm making an uninformed point without reading the whole thing; I explain EVERY viewpoint I express.Think about this, folks.

This whole games are too violent thing is absurd. Parents who demonize games like this need to work on their parenting skills instead of wasting their time trying to censor things. Im a product of divorced parents, grew up playing all sorts of violent video games and watching movies like full metal jacket, colors, basic instinct etc. and i turned out ok, i got my education and now have a great job and working on a family of my own. i not a thief, or a murderer or any sort of psycho / felon. Why? Easy m

A game is supposed to be fun, and yes, an escape from reality, but I see no need
to portray sex or out and out murder, even in a game.
This is not pushing the limits, it is trying to see how stupid a game maker can be.
Keep it up, and the day will come when none of us can play.

Reading the posts it seems that most every one here is in favor of sex and graphic violence in video games. Personally I don't really have a problem with this content being in games. As a sociology graduate, I am familiar with the research on this topic and it basically says that sex and violence on TV has no discernable impact on one's behaviour. (I'm not aware of any good research on video games, or violence of an interactive nature, but I'm willing to give it the benefit of the doubt.)
That being sai

The common argument for video games is that they do no harm in the long term; that "sex and violence" are nothing new, and looking back, they haven'' really warped our minds. Perhaps, but is there a line that goes too far? For instance, in the article, Gerard Jones brings up the analogy of porn, claiming that it is a safe release of tension. But then people get squirmy when bondage is introduced. Can the same be said of video games? If sex and gore are "harmless," then in theory, game developers could devel

You know what it comes down to? Kids just want to win. Hell, grown ups just want to win. And most video games now, the only way to win is to destroy your opponent.I've suffered a couple GMs that couldn't escape this philosophy in pen & paper D&D. Our party would come up with an ingenious way around some npc/encounter/boss, and the GM would basically "cheat" so that we'd have to fight it anyways. So in the end, you had to combat the big gahuna to win. This mentality causes the underdeveloped mi